


Mr Romero

by beetlejoos



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Rescue, Team Dynamics, Whump, hijnks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:00:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29535099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetlejoos/pseuds/beetlejoos
Summary: He’s screwed, thinks Malcolm; even by his standards, he is hopelessly, utterly screwed...They're taking him to Mr Romero.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 71





	Mr Romero

There’s a pop, and the lid of the trunk swings open above him. Slowly - _painfully_ \- Malcolm cranes his neck, squinting up into the sudden dazzle of light.

“Mr Bright!” says a pleased voice. “How have you been enjoying our hospitality?”

The words don’t exist to express Malcolm’s answer to that question. He settles for the deadliest glare he can muster at the man silhouetted above him. _Evans,_ he remembers vaguely - he suspects he might be the ringleader. Evans leans over him, wrinkling his nose at what is probably the strong scent of stale sweat. Having been tied up and crammed into the trunk of a car for the best part of a day, Malcolm’s long stopped being able to sense it himself.

“Smile, now.”

The _click_ of a camera phone sounds above him. “Beautiful,” says the man, and then there’s the _swoosh_ of a message being sent. In all of the scenarios Malcolm’s calculated for the moment the trunk finally opened above him (ranging from ‘miraculous rescue' to ‘bullet between the eyes’), being _photographed_ has no place in any of them. He tries to push the obvious question past the gag and Evans cocks his head, looking down at him appraisingly before he gives a conspiratorial smile. “It’s your lucky day, Mr Bright,” he murmurs, in the face of all possible evidence. “I understand that you were looking for the elusive Mr Romero?”

Malcolm stares up at him, wide-eyed… _because_ _that_ _sentence can’t be heading anywhere good._

He _had_ come to the docks hoping he might discover a lead on Mr Romero. ‘Elusive’ doesn’t cover the half of it; the man’s real name, his face, anything other than the wake of violence he’s left across the city, are all shrouded in mystery… but Malcolm had been hoping to find some kind of trail. Stumbling across a group of thugs who are very clearly _not_ Mr Romero and his associates had seemed like unusually bad luck, even for him - and it puts the odds of his team figuring out what’s happened to him unhappily close to zero.

It hadn’t even been _his_ kind of case. Profiling underworld bosses - even those as ruthless and violent as Romero - isn’t exactly his thing. But he’d been bored, and Gil had been desperate for some kind of a lead, and had let him take a look at the files as a favour.

 _Note to self,_ he thinks bitterly. _Next time you’re bored… try yoga._

“It just so happens,” Evans continues, “me and my crew were hoping to make Mr Romero’s acquaintance ourselves. He’s a difficult man to get hold of, isn’t he?” He pauses, as if expecting Malcolm to be able to answer. “Only it turns out, he’s _very_ eager to meet the man who’s been tracking him down for the NYPD.” Evans smiles at the look that appears on Malcolm’s face. “I really am very grateful to you, Mr Bright, for facilitating our introduction.”

 _No… no no no -_ Malcolm tries frantically to speak around the gag, to get Evans to take it off him - because if he can just _talk_ , if they just let him talk for _one minute_ , he might have a chance at getting out of this. His words are mangled by the cloth but the _urgency_ comes through loud and clear as he stares at the man imploringly, wrenching pointlessly at the tape trapping his arms behind his back, pinning his legs together.

There’s the _ping_ of a message alert. Evans checks his phone, nodding to whoever’s behind him, calmly ignoring Malcolm’s efforts to get his attention. It’s several moments before he finally casts his eyes back down at the struggling, squirming profiler in his trunk. “Time to go,” he announces. “Yell all you want. It’s not gonna make any fucking difference,” and then Malcolm’s plunged back into darkness. His panicked cries are drowned out by the sudden roar of the engine, the world lurching around him as the car screeches away.

*

Rattling along in his stifling prison, Malcolm reflects that maybe he should have been more careful about what he wished for. He’s finally going to see the face of the man they’ve been hunting. _‘The most dangerous man in New York’_ , Gil had said.

Mr Romero is more of a myth than a man, even after all the digging his team have already done. When the criminals hoping to do business with him don’t even know what the hell the man looks like, it doesn’t bode well for the NYPD ever catching him. His only consolation, Malcolm thinks, as the car takes a tight corner and he’s sent slamming helplessly into the opposite side of the trunk, is that there was clearly _some_ kind of connection between the location he picked and Romero himself… enough that the gang who’ve taken him thought the man might be there too.

Admittedly, that feels like a pretty small consolation right now.

He’s being sped towards a fate he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. This is a man guilty of everything from assassination to human trafficking, from gunrunning to drug smuggling,… _and_ _what the hell,_ thinks Malcolm in sheer terror, _what the hell is he going to do to an ex-FBI, NYPD consultant who’s been helping the authorities track him down?_ A quick death would be the _kindest_ option. Based on the Tarantino-style rumours he’s heard, it’s also the least likely. He’s been fighting off a panic attack in the confines of the trunk since well before the car started moving… but now, trussed up and aching, half-suffocating on the gag, _knowing_ what awaits him, he feels like he could slide into all out hysteria. _You’ll think of something,_ he tells himself desperately. _There’s always another way - there must be something you can do to convince these men not to go ahead with this…_

But the rational part of his mind already knows that it’s hopeless. They’ll never let him talk. These men haven’t shown him a scrap of empathy, or even curiosity, since he’d woken up dazed and confused in the pitch dark of the trunk. He’d shouted himself hoarse, exhausted himself struggling, and they hadn’t even popped the lid to check on him. Malcolm’s a bargaining chip to them, nothing more, and if he wasn’t useful, he’d probably already be dead. _But maybe that would’ve been better,_ he can’t help thinking, _than whatever’s waiting for him at the end of this journey…._

On cue, the floor dips below him. They’re descending, probably into some kind of underground parking lot… _that’s where these kind of deals take place in movies_ , he thinks wildly _._ The car slows, then rolls to a stop. He can hear doors slamming, voices, before the trunk pops again. Someone’s leaning towards him before he’s even had a chance to focus on the three figures above him. A hand shoves him roughly aside - sending stabs of agony through his cramped, contorted limbs - as the man gropes around for something in the back of the car. A moment later, he straightens up triumphantly, leaving Malcolm to roll back to his original position with a grunt of pain.

The man’s holding up… _a shirt, or a bag, or…?_

Malcolm’s eyes widen, muffled protests completely ignored as the man seizes him by the collar and the hood is forced over his head. Then hands are grabbing him, unfolding him from the confines of the car. His stiff limbs shriek at the sudden movement, his groan earning him a swift blow to the side of his head with what feels like a gun. “Shut up,” drawls Evans. The tape is cut off his ankles and he’s hauled upright, hanging from the grip on his arms as his legs fail to support his own weight.

For a minute they all just stand there. Malcolm tries to get his feet steady underneath him; to discern anything around him beyond vague shapes and shadows. Then he’s being frogmarched along between two of the men, stumbling and tripping, disorientating strips of light and dark winking in at him through the cloth. His heart is pounding so loudly in his chest his entire body seems to be reverberating with it, his pulse thumping in his ears, breaths too fast and too thin beneath the claustrophobic hood. They make a sharp turn and the sound of their footsteps changes, echoing eerily… _a large, enclosed space_. As they come to a halt again, Malcolm makes a desperate, last ditch effort to be heard through the gag and gets a punch in the stomach by way of response.

“Say another word,” says Evans softly, directly beside his ear, “and we’ll hand you over with your legs already broken.”

And then… they wait. Malcolm stands shakily between the two men, each with a firm grip on his bicep, and tries not to pass out from lack of oxygen.

 _He’s screwed_ , is the only coherent thought currently chasing itself around his head; _even by his standards, he is hopelessly, utterly screwed._ He can feel one of the men fidgeting beside him: it really doesn’t help his nerves to know that even the hardened criminals who’ve captured him are scared of the man they’re about to meet. _His team probably haven’t even realised he’s in trouble yet._ He feels a pang of grief when he imagines Gil finding out what’s happened.

If they ever do find out what’s happened to him, that is.

Finally, a distant noise breaks the stillness. The low rumble of a car. Then footsteps, calm and measured, approaching from the far end of the parking lot. They echo out cinematically, louder and louder as they cross the cavernous space, before coming to a halt a short distance ahead of him.

Evans clears his throat. “Mr Romero, I presume?”

More footsteps, as Evans - the only one of the three not holding him - steps forward. There’s low voices that Malcolm can’t make out from beneath the hood, and then he’s being dragged towards them. He puts up a token, futile resistance, wrenching against the men holding him until he’s jerked to a stop. He can just make out a silhouette in front of him: the dark head and shoulders of a man. “One NYPD profiler, as promised,” says Evans, and Malcolm tries to steel himself as the hood is yanked off his head, leaving him blinking into the eyes of the man standing before him.

He stares, his eyes rounding with shock.

Gil looks back at him impassively.

Evans claps a proprietary hand on his shoulder and Malcolm barely registers it - he’s still too busy _staring._ The small, bewildered sound he makes is swallowed by the gag as his captor looks him over in satisfaction. “Would you look at that!” Evans declares. “He’s finally learned how to shut the fuck up.”

Gil - _Gil,_ screams Malcolm’s inner monologue, _how the fuck is_ _Gil_ _here?! -_ looks back to Evans,and even through his daze Malcolm notices Evans tensing up beside him.

“Sounds like you’ll be glad for us to take him off your hands,” says Gil calmly.

He’s wearing a _suit,_ for god’s sake; an expensive one Malcolm’s never seen before, and if he didn’t know better he’d think Gil looked _frightening._ Even his _body language_ is different… he returns his attention to Malcolm, taking in the profiler’s dishevelled state with a dispassionate eye. “What’s his condition?”

“Practically good as new,” assures Evans. “I figured you’d want him in all in one piece. To start out with.”

Gil’s smile is chilling. “You’d be correct.”

JT steps forward, a briefcase in one hand, looking every inch the stone-faced enforcer Malcolm had been imagining… except for the part where he’s _JT._ _He’s dreaming_ , Malcolm decides. _His concussion’s crept back up on him and now he’s hallucinating this: Gil and JT as criminal kingpins. He’s probably still unconscious in the trunk…_

JT hands the case over to the guy who until a few seconds ago was holding Malcolm’s left arm in a death grip. “The amount discussed,” says Gil and Malcolm watches, spellbound, as the case is flipped open, rows and rows of notes stacked up neatly inside.

“Just as we agreed,” affirms Evans. “He’s all yours, Mr Romero.” He glances over at Malcolm again with a slight frown. “He seems to have calmed down a little, anyway.”

 _Right…_ he should probably still be struggling, Malcolm realises. He gives a half-hearted tug against the one man still holding him and gets a brutal shake that almost sends him face first into the concrete. He recovers his balance, just in time to spot a muscle tic in Gil’s jaw.

“Mr Romero… I was hoping we might take this opportunity to discuss some other potential business ventures,” says Evans eagerly. “I believe we might be able to come to some mutually beneficial arrangements. I could talk you through some of the details… if that would be of interest?”

Gil's gaze travels slowly over the faces of the three men in cool assessment. Evans waits, sweating, left to dangle for a good few seconds before Gil makes his answer. He nods to Malcolm.

“Take him,” he says to JT. “Mr Evans. Why don’t you talk me through what you had in mind?” And apparently everyone he works with is an Oscar-worthy actor, because JT doesn’t even meet Malcolm’s eyes as he closes a hand around his bicep, steering him away across the dim parking lot. Malcolm twists, almost stumbling as he looks back at Gil - who they’re _leaving behind,_ alone in the company of three violent thugs. He makes a noise of protest that, unsurprisingly given his current circumstances, goes completely ignored by all of them.

“Juuuust move,” JT murmurs under his breath, and he’s marched along, gently but inexorably. The mens’ voices fade to a hum as he’s led towards a sleek black sedan with tinted windows. Then JT’s opening the door, guiding him into the backseat with a hand on his head.

The door closes, sealing him inside the protective shell of the car. A second later and JT’s climbing in beside him, and he’s _finally_ meeting Malcolm’s frantic gaze. “Low volume, dude,” he mutters warningly, and then he reaches over to untie the gag. Malcolm’s talking before he’s even finished -

“What the hell is happening?!”

“ _Easy,_ ” says JT softly and - _right,_ Malcolm should be _whispering -_ although his voice is so hoarse he could probably scream right now and it wouldn’t carry beyond the confines of the car. “What’s happening is us getting you out of there. Dani?”

Malcolm blinks, for the first time noticing Dani, dressed in a full tac vest in the driver’s seat. Her worried eyes meet his in the mirror. “You ok, Bright?” she asks, fishing around in a first aid lying open on the seat beside her. “Any injuries we should know about?”

“Dani,” he gasps, feeling like he’s having an out-of-body experience. “What’s going on?! Gil -"

“Gil’s fine,” says JT firmly, as Dani hands him a pair of scissors. “Plan was to get _you_ to safety first -”

A radio crackles, making Malcolm jump. “ _All units, move in -"_

\- and Dani darts out of the car, her voice mingling with the shouts of more police bursting out of cars from all over the parking lot. Malcolm dives forward, peering through the dark glass as the officers close in, weapons drawn. JT joins him at the window just in time to see Evans and his men being handcuffed in the distance. “ _Suspects secure,”_ says the voice from the radio. _“Repeat, all suspects secure…”_

“Like I said,” JT says, sitting back in satisfaction, “all part of the plan. Now hold still and let me get this tape off.”

A minute later and Malcolm’s free. He moves his arms in front of him with a grateful sigh. “You good?” asks JT, and some of the tension drains out of him at Malcolm’s nod. “Alright… I’m gonna check on the situation outside, see if we can bring the bus down here. Just stay put for a second -"

Malcolm’s already climbing out of the car.

Without someone holding him up, it turns out his legs aren’t so steady underneath him and he has to clutch the roof of the sedan to stop from falling. JT’s head pops out from the other door, glaring at him. “ _Stay here,_ ” he repeats, pointing at him emphatically over the car. “I’m gonna find a paramedic.”

“I don’t need a medic -”

“Your bloody head wound disagrees,” says JT flatly. He nods to someone behind Malcolm and heads off, firing a final “ _don’t move_ ” as he goes.

Malcolm gingerly turns round. At the far end of the parking lot, Evans and his men are being loaded into a van. Officers are clustered around in groups, Dani among them. Already there’s the air of the job having been done, of the danger being over. And hurrying towards him….

“Gil!”

“Kid -” Gil’s hugging him the moment he reaches him. After a few seconds he pulls back in favour of scanning him over once again; this time with his concern and relief written all over his face. “Are you ok?”

“What the hell?!” Malcolm blurts out, “you went _undercover_? As a _crime lord?!_ ”

Gil shrugs as if posing as New York’s Most Wanted is all in a day’s work. “Hey, it was the best shot we had… and it _worked_. We got you back - and with everything Evans just gave me, Vice are gonna be busy til Christmas.” He frowns. “Now _sit down_ before you fall down. We didn’t go through all that for you to bust your skull open passing out in the parking lot.”

“But -"

Gil pointedly yanks the car door open wider, in a way that makes it clear no further answers will be coming as long Malcolm’s on his feet. He reluctantly sinks onto the backseat. “How did you even find me?” he demands.

“We got Romero.” Gil says it mildly, but he’s not quite able to hide the look of satisfaction in his eyes. “Him, and a couple of his associates. We had their phones in custody when the deal for you came in. Which, FYI kid, if you’re trying to give me a heart attack, you’re going the right way about it.”

Malcolm stares up at him, a smile slowly replacing the stunned look on his face. “…You caught him?”

“Him and his crew. And now, we’ve got Evans too,” says Gil smugly. “Not a bad day’s work. Of course, I could’ve done _without_ the part where our profiler got kidnapped.” His hand lands on Malcolm’s shoulder and squeezes gently. “You sure you’re ok?”

“I’m fine,” says Malcolm, “I’m _fine_ , I’m just…. still processing.” He feels a swell of giddiness rising up to replace the sheer confusion of the last few minutes. “Gil, you just took out half of New York’s underworld in a _day!_ ” He grins. “Nice suit, by the way.”

“That reminds me.” Gil unfastens the watch on his wrist and hands it over. Malcolm blinks at it.

“Is this… my dress watch?”

Gil smirks. “You left it at the precinct. I needed something ludicrously expensive to pull off the mob look.” He breezily ignores Malcolm’s glare and steps back to wave someone over. Malcolm peers round the doorframe, spotting JT and Dani leading a medic towards them.

“No -! Come on, Gil. I honestly don’t need -"

“Just let them look you over,” Gil says earnestly. “As a favour to me. Can you do that?”

He’s already opening his mouth to argue - but then he thinks of Gil receiving that photo from Evans. Of all the unseen work and worry his team must have put in since, to have him sitting here, alive and well. “Is that a yes?” prods Gil.

Malcolm sighs. “How could I say no to New York’s most terrifying crime boss?” And he can’t help smile at Gil’s laugh as he helps him out of the car.


End file.
